The Rest of the Story - DWM 3/10/14

Are you ready to hear the rest of the story about Scheherazade?  If you're new to the blog, you can read my earlier post HERE where I began the story of my plans for this really old Dinosaur UFO.

So.......Once Upon a Time.......

Well, okay, this is a long story and you may not want to read it all (LOL!!!), so let me begin at the end ..... here is Scheherazade, all finished!

It's straight - I promise!

I have to say I'm fairly happy with it, but not thrilled like I hoped to be.  It's certainly better than just slapping on a few plain borders.  But I'm pretty disappointed because my plans for this quilt's border design were an epic FAIL :(

I had all kinds of ideas flowing about ways to dress up this quilt, and spent hours drawing possible designs that fit in with the Arabian Nights theme.

I worked in EQ7 for hours trying to figure out how to make custom borders - still haven't figured that one out!  But I do have a few books on the way to help me in the future - LOL!!!

My main thought was to try to soften all those sharp edges in the Buzzsaw design in the center, and I wanted to pull that wonderful print into the outer border somehow.  But I had to figure out a way to get good separation of the pieces.  So, I pulled out Susan Cleveland's book, Piping Hot Curves......

I'll link this book and project up with Sharon Vrooman's Let's Book It party!!!

Susan came to our Guild in 2009 and taught several classes.  She is an amazing quilter and such a nice person - we all loved her!  The class I took was about inserting piping in the seams of curves to dress up a quilt design.

I loved the class and totally LOVED the effect of the piping to give that extra little ZING!  I even got a little button to "officially" state that I am a Piping Hottie LOL!!!

Blocks made in class in 2009

I got busy working on a corner design using the piping technique to give the pieces definition, and I have to say I was very happy with the design itself and how it turned out.

But I was totally disappointed in the way it looked on the quilt.  Here it is just pinned on to test it out.....

It just seems to make the quilt too fussy.  Too much going on.  And I ended up liking it better without all the fussy corners.  I'm sure glad I only made up the one!  I'm happy with the stepped side borders design that I ended up with, and I'm sure I'll be happy with this quilt for many years.  But I'm also pretty sure I'll always look at it and think about what could have been if I had been a little more seasoned as a designer!

**************************************

As for the rest of my design wall, I saw Lesley, the Cuddle Quilter, making some really cool hexie braids on her blog HERE and was immediately smitten - actually I think most of the blog world was just as smitten!  But when I checked out the price of that ruler I decided it would have to wait a while :O

Then I got a bright idea!  I have several sets of Marti Michell templates, and the Large and Small Hexagons have been sitting in my templates box for ages - never used.  I thought, why not try it?  So I pulled out some of my 2-1/2" strips, lined them up with the largest hexagon template, cut, sewed..... and quick as a wink I had Scrappy Braids!!!!

Aren't these cool???  Super, super easy!!!

And I didn't have to buy anything - I love it!!!

I think these will make a wonderful Leader/Ender project for a scrappy quilt, so I've cut up a bunch of them and set them by my machine.  This also means I can mark off my NewFO Challenge project for March - yoohoo!!!!

And the April Bertie BOM package arrived Saturday!

Don't you just LOVE those cute little bunny ears on Bertie?  

Bless her heart, she really does get into the holidays, doesn't she?   

I got totally sidetracked from the March Bertie and hadn't touched it in quite a while, so I thought it might be just as easy to work on them both together.

Yesterday I finished up the buttonhole stitching on both, and got the HSTs ready for applying to the borders.   The hand stitched embellishments are going to be fun on both of these :*)

So what's on your Design Wall?  

Share with us at Judy's Patchwork Times!
Also linking up with Freemotion's Tuesday Linky Party!

Have a lovely week!!!!

Hugs & Blessings!

Teresa

=^..^=